Articles for category: English Articles

Four Indian Supreme Court Judges Accuse the Chief Justice of Wrongdoing

The judges should have been more considerate towards the institutional damage their actions have caused. They have hurt the court for decades to come. Institutional reform proves healthy when it comes from the inside; and one would like to think, that four senior judges wield a hefty amount of institutional power to transform the procedural mechanism without having to 'call upon the people' to intervene.This was little more than a political act in a country where politics and the law only function along the simple logic of institutionalising antagonism.

18. Januar 2018

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Final Thoughts on Mnemonic Constitutionalism

Twelve scholars from eight countries have offered their critical perspectives on the legal governance of historical memory, categorised under the common heading of “memory laws”. One aspect crystalized by this symposium is that despite their multiple forms (punitive and declarative, constitutional and administrative, legislative and judicial, etc.), the adoption of such memory regulations has been on a tremendous rise in Europe.

15. Januar 2018

Memory Politics and Academic Freedom: Some Recent Controversies in Greece

An important area where law and historical memory intersect is the use of memory laws to express collective disapproval of crimes against humanity. These laws, although based on a compelling need to use the symbolic dimension of the law in order to condemn the lowest points of history, can have dangerous unintended consequences for freedom of speech.

14. Januar 2018

Remembering as Pacting between Past, Present and Future

The past has not been spared from the “politics of resentment” engulfing Poland for the last two years. The peculiar (mis)understanding and political instrumentalization of history by Polish rulers provide an important cautionary tale against one-sided partisan historical debate as it impacts how we remember the past and see ourselves today.

13. Januar 2018

The Kundera Case and the Neurotic Collective Memory of Postcommunism

History is a battlefield of present politics. Dealing with the past reveals the power struggles and strategies of the present. Past events are both denounced and glorified by political agents of the present hoping to weaken their enemies. However, the past also contains injustices and political crimes and any decision not to deal with them in the present only reaffirms them and confirms the unjust status of their victims. Not to contend with the past injustices thus compromises the legitimacy of the present system of positive law. To deal, or not to deal with the past, indeed, is an important question. However, it is also inseparable from questions of which past is to be dealt with and how.

12. Januar 2018

Memory Wars of Commercial Worth – The Legal Status of the Red Star in Hungary

With this blogpost for the T.M.C. Asser Institute – Verfassungsblog joint symposium, I would like to draw attention to another facet in the legal governance of historical memory, that regarding the use of totalitarian symbols of the past. This issue remains particularly pertinent in the region of Central and Eastern Europe in parallel to the widely discussed decline in the rule of law.   

11. Januar 2018

Memory Politics in Hungary: Political Justice without Rule of Law

After the 1989-90 democratic transition, Poland and Hungary were the first to introduce the institutional framework of constitutional democracy and of transitional justice. For a number of reasons, including a lack of democratic traditions and constitutional culture, after the 2010 parliamentary elections, liberal constitutionalism became a victim of the authoritarian efforts of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. In April 2013, the government as part of the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law adopted Article U, which supplements detailed provisions on the country’s communist past and the statute of limitations in the body text of the constitution.

10. Januar 2018

30 days, six months… forever? Border control and the French Council of State

For Christmas 2017, the French Council of State – the Supreme Court for administrative matters in France – gave a nasty present to those attached to the free movement of persons in the Schengen area. In a ruling issued on 28 December (see here, in French), it upheld the decision of the French Government to reintroduce, for the ninth time in a row, identity control at its “internal” borders, i.e. borders with other Schengen countries – even though checks at internal borders are not, in fact, systematically performed. This decision, issued without even bringing the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling, sets aside, probably unlawfully, the time limit set by the Schengen Borders Code.

9. Januar 2018

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Decommunization in Times of War: Ukraine’s Militant Democracy Problem  

The Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada adopted four ‘memory laws’ shortly after the Maidan revolution in the spring of 2015: One contains a legislation criminalizing both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, prohibiting the propaganda of their symbols; two laws commemorating, respectively, Ukraine’s fighters for twentieth-century independence movement and the victory over Nazism during the Second World War, and a law guaranteeing access to archives of repressive Soviet-era organs. These laws raise fundamental questions about the legitimate defense of democracy in times of political transformation and war.

9. Januar 2018